


At Least One Thing Worth Living For

by samyazaz



Series: In the End We Have Each Other [2]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Cooking, Domestic Fluff, Fluff, Kid Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-27
Updated: 2015-06-08
Packaged: 2018-01-26 16:57:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1695656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samyazaz/pseuds/samyazaz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Vignettes and drabbles in the In The End We Have Each Other universe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The house smells like delicious things when Grantaire gets home from delivering his latest commission, but that's no surprise, Enjolras is physically incapable of cooking bad food. What _is_ a little bit of a surprise is Gina standing on a stepladder beside Enjolras, wielding a spatula as long as her arm and frowning intently down at what appears to be a skillet of raw eggs.

"What's going on in here?" Grantaire comes into the kitchen to lean his shoulder against the wall and smile at both of them.

"Daddy!" Gina abandons the spatula in the eggs to hop down off the stepladder (from the very top step, they are going to have to have a conversation about that or Grantaire's heart is not going to survive it intact) and run over to him, squealing. "Papa's teaching me to cook!"

Her hands are wet with raw egg and she lives little yellow handprints on his pants when she wraps her arms around his legs to hug him, but they're his painting pants anyway, what's one more stain to add to the collection. "Is he?" He scoops Gina up and gives her a messy kiss on the cheek, then smiles past her at Enjolras. "You lucky girl. I've been trying to get Papa to teach me to cook for years, and still the best I can manage is to boil spaghetti without burning the pan."

"That's an exaggeration." Enjolras glances sidelong at him and gives him a slow smile as he rescues the spatula out of the pan and stirs the eggs that Gina abandoned. "You fed yourself perfectly well before we came along. How'd the drop-off go?"

"I survived mostly on take-out and PB&J, let's be honest here." Gina's squirming in his arms, so Grantaire sets her down and lets her run back to Enjolras's side. She uses a grip on his trousers to help pull herself back up the stepladder. "And it was fine, the client loved it." He crowds in behind Gina and gives her a noisy kiss on the crown of her head before he leans in for a gentler one from Enjolras. "Said she'd recommend me to her friends, so that's always good."

"Papa!" Gina slams her fists down on her hips and twists to glare up at Enjolras, her face screwed up with all the fury a five-year-old is capable of mustering. "You ruined it!"

"It was burning, Little G." Grantaire gives Enjolras a quick, startled grin to hear Enjolras using the nickname he first came up with for Gina. "You were too busy saying hi to Daddy to remember to stir it."

"But it was _mine_ , you said this one was _mine_ , and now it's _not_."

The eggs are nearly cooked through anyway. Enjolras slides them out of the pan onto a waiting plate and puts the pan back on the flame. "All right, sweetheart, we'll try it again. Let's teach Daddy how to make an omelet, shall we?"

Gina claps her hands and bounces on the stepladder, and Grantaire nearly has a heart attack right there in the middle of the kitchen. "Daddy, watch! I'ma show you how to crack eggs!"

Enjolras catches his gaze over Gina's head, and his eyes are laughing. _Eat carefully,_ he mouths. _Watch for shells._

Grantaire nods his understanding, and then leans down over Gina's shoulder. "All right, Little G. Show Daddy how it's done."


	2. Chapter 2

Gina's waiting on the couch when they get home, trying very hard to look like she's not worried but failing utterly. She has her knees pulled up to her chest and her lip caught between her teeth, and even though the TV's on her gaze flies straight to them when Enjolras unlocks the front door and steps inside. 

"Well?" Her voice is tight, almost trembling. "What did he say?"

"You're suspended for a week," Enjolras tells her, and expects the way it makes her hiss out her breath, makes all her worry disappear beneath a flush of outrage. 

"We could've talked it down to three days, I think," Grantaire says, shouldering through behind him. "If you'd issued an apology. But we rather figured--"

Gina snorts and slumps back against the couch, mutters, " _Fat chance,_ " and Grantaire grins.

"--Yeah. That." He moves into the living room and drops down onto the couch beside Gina, slinging an arm around her shoulder. "We _did_ convince him to have all your teachers email you your homework assignments, so at least you won't fall behind while you're being cruelly forced to stay home and sleep in and spend the week in your pajamas."

"Goodie," Gina says, dry, but there's a hidden smile pulling at the corners of her mouth. She relents after a second and lets the smile free. "Thank you. Both of you."

"We made a stop on our way home, too," Grantaire says, and gestures with the grocery bag in his hands. "Haagen Dazs. And chocolate syrup. The cool kind that hardens into a shell so you can break it with your spoon. And sprinkles."

Gina presses her fingers to her mouth, staring at Grantaire with big, wide eyes. She glances briefly at Enjolras like she's searching for some answer there that Grantaire can't provide. And Enjolras can guess well enough what she's wondering, but he keeps his expression guileless and just says, "You still like sprinkles, right?"

"Of course she likes sprinkles. You don't outgrow sprinkles." Grantaire fishes the carton out of the plastic bag and pries the top off, then gestures at Enjolras with it. "Get spoons, Papa, you're closer to the kitchen. Three of 'em."

"Why?" Gina says faintly.

Enjolras can't see them as he goes into the kitchen for the spoons, but he can guess easily enough how Grantaire would roll his eyes at the question. "Because in this house," Grantaire says, right on cue, "standing up to authority for the sake of what's right earns you the expensive ice cream, with the cool chocolate sauce and sprinkles, duh." He holds his hand out expectantly when Enjolras returns with the spoons, so Enjolras hands two of the three over. Grantaire digs one into the ice cream, scoops out a bite, and pops it into Gina's mouth. "There's pizza on the way, too. With cheesy breadsticks. But you looked a little down so we figured ice cream first, while we wait for the delivery guy."

Gina sucks the ice cream off the spoon, swallows it, and says, " _Why?_ "

"Are you kidding me?" Grantaire demands at the same time that Enjolras drops down onto the edge of the coffee table and says, "Sweetheart, don't you know us at _all_?"

"I mean." She scrubs her hands over her face. "I didn't think you would be mad at me, not once you knew what happened. But ice cream, and pizza, and chocolate sauce--"

"And sprinkles," Grantaire says, shaking the bottle with a pointed look.

She smiles at him a little helplessly. "And sprinkles. Isn't it sort of sending the wrong message?"

"Is it sending the message that we love you and support your right to stand up for what you believe in?" Enjolras asks. "Because that's exactly the right message."

"I've been there _two weeks_ ," she says. "You're not worried I'm going to get a reputation as a troublemaker?"

" _Worried_ , no," Grantaire says, exchanging a look with Enjolras. "Hopeful? Now that's another story."

Gina lets out an unsteady breath.

"Look," Enjolras says. "If you knew that we were going to come home and give you a scolding for all of this, would you have done anything differently?"

"No," she says, looking defiant. There's a fierce brightness to her gaze that Grantaire always says she gets from Enjolras. "Never."

Enjolras smiles. "That's our girl."

"But." She frowns. "What if it's worse next time? What if they don't change, and I keep getting in trouble for standing up to them, and I get expelled?"

"Then we'll have to think of something a little bigger than pizza and expensive ice cream," Grantaire says. "You're too young for a car, but I bet we can think of something."

"And your dad can homeschool you, if it comes to it," Enjolras says, even though that had been their first choice and Gina had quietly insisted on attending high school with the rest of her friends, with a passionate and well-reasoned argument that had left both of them sitting there blinking at her, wondering when their daughter had grown up and become smarter than them.

"There are programs that still let homeschooled kids go to dances and other school functions with affiliate high schools," Grantaire says. "You could have the best of both worlds."

Gina looks between the both of them and then scoops another bite of ice cream into her mouth and laughs. "You guys are _hoping_ I get myself expelled, aren't you?"

"All we want is for you to be true to yourself," Enjolras says quietly, earnestly. "If that means you get expelled, we'll make it work. If it means you revolutionize the school and leave it transformed in your wake, then we'll probably cry with pride. But it doesn't matter how anyone else feels about what you do, we will always, always be proud of you."

They talked about this, Enjolras and Grantaire did, before going into the principal's office and again at the grocery store while discussing which flavor of Haagen Dazs to bring home. They talked about how best to make it clear to Gina that they supported her, and that while they couldn't defy the principal's decision they felt nothing but pride for her and what she did. They talked about how best they could make sure that she came out of this happy and proud and empowered, instead of cowed and chastened, and despite that, they've still ended up with Gina sitting there in front of them crying into her ice cream. But it only lasts a moment before she sniffs and wipes at her cheeks and then launches herself forward, wrapping an arm around each of them and hugging them hard. "Thank you," she breathes, and, "I love you so much." And they hug her back, with the ice cream melting between them, and Enjolras is so happy he could cry, as well.


End file.
